


Hollow

by g33kyclassic



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Charles You Will Be Drunk, Drug Use, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, M/M, Poor Charles, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21595765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/g33kyclassic/pseuds/g33kyclassic
Summary: Added scene from X-men: Days of Future Past.  Charles and Erik have a confrontation in a Paris hotel after the plane scene, but before the go to find Raven.Sometimes its the people who know you best, the people you care about the most, who can push you over the edge.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 28
Kudos: 75
Collections: Secret Mutant Exchange 2019





	Hollow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherikinkrakoa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherikinkrakoa/gifts).



****

**Hollow**

Erik is ranting, which really, when isn’t he ranting? He’d ranted on the plane until Charles had picked himself up and walked away. Now, in a hotel in Paris (in a beautiful room that he would be able to appreciate if it weren’t for the angry man across from him) Erik is giving his righteous anger free rein again.

Charles is sick of it. He is sick of Erik angrily judging him for suppressing his powers (the topic of his current tirade). He’s tired. His legs are tingling and his head is throbbing. He’s gripping the very fine, extremely soft bed sheets in his hands and clenching, trying to control himself.

_Count backwards from ten. Take deep breaths. Calm your mind._

But all of Charles’ coping techniques can’t fight against the onslaught of Erik’s anger – his judgement. Erik had looked Charles up and down today and found him wanting and Charles can feel it. The distain. The disgust.

Another day, another time and Charles might have wilted under Erik’s gaze and his judgement. He would have turned all that anger on himself and let it eat away at him. But today he is drained, he aches. He is sitting on a bed in a lovely hotel in desperate need of rest, unable to move his legs and flooded with the influx of everyone else’s emotions, his shield, so easily broken these days, cracking further and further every second.

“You’re just denying who you are, Charles!” Erik shouts. “Is this another great move in the ‘appease the humans’ plan you’re so fond of?”

“I am not appeasing -”

“You can’t tell me its a not benefit. Looking like them, acting like them, being like them in every way.”

Charles can hear the unspoken words “walking like them, not using a wheelchair, looking ‘normal’ again”. He can feel the waves of contempt rolling off Erik and washing over him so powerfully he felt like he was drowning.

“It’s pathetic.”

Charles loses it. Despite what everyone, Erik included, thinks, Charles is angry too. He’s angry about years of neglect from his family. He’s angry at the lack of acceptance of mutants in society. He’s angry that the two people he loves most in the world walked away from him without a backwards glance. And that well of anger, now in this moment, demands to be released.

“Pathetic, am I?” Charles spits out his words, as his telepathy lashes out at Erik with a furiousity Charles can barely contain.

Charles sits on the bed, his legs numb and motionless, his chest heaving. But that is not what Erik sees – he can’t see the crippled, helpless man on the bed. He sees the projection Charles wants him to see.

That projection walks confidently over to Erik who is crumpled on the floor, trapped, unable to to move, unable to access his mutation, completely at Charles’ mercy.

“You think I did this for them? You think I gave in to what they wanted?” His projection asks, snarling. “You don’t know me at all.”

And then Charles pushes. He pushes it all at Erik.

Standing in the oppressive heat in Cuba, holding Shaw still, straining to keep himself separate from the cess pit of Shaw’s mind. Seeing the coin coming, knowing what was going to happen, choosing to stay, choosing to help Erik. Always. He would make that choice again and again. Then the blinding pain, the feeling of the coin moving through Shaw, the agonizing slowness of it. Dying and yet not dead.

Moments later, barely having time to truly ground himself back in the land of the living, arguing with Erik, the man he loved. The man he thought he’d understood, except he’s suddenly lost at sea and unable to find the right words. Completely flooded with the panic of thousands of minds, unable to reel his telepathy in, hanging onto his sanity by a thread. About to die again, a thousand times over.

The shock of the bullet. The pain. The loss of his legs. The emotional hurt of Raven and Erik leaving, just leaving him there on that beach, bleeding with no prospect of rescue. That betrayal was so much worse than any physical pain he could have ever borne. 

Starting the school and finding some happiness and purpose, only to lose student after student to a hopeless, pointless war. Wheeling the halls to see rooms once filled, now empty.

All that work, all that effort and for what? Empty rooms and silent halls. Pain. Loss. Giving and giving until he was nothing more than a husk, an empty shell of a man in an empty mansion. Worthless and forgotten.

The projected Charles stands tall, proud, unshakeable in the face of his past, of his pain. The Charles on the bed, the real Charles, shakes with anger and tears pour down his face. Hopeless, helpless tears.

On the floor Erik appears like a reflection of his true self, but somehow even angrier, because of course, even now Erik can find a well of rage Charles cannot match. He can be on the floor, tears streaking his own cheeks, and still vibrant with righteous indignation. A man apart, on an island of his own making, fighting his pain and fear with vengeance and power.

Charles wants to scream. Damn Erik. Damn him.

“Do you know what I could do to you?” His projection asks, head cocked to the side as if considering options.

Erik glares, but says nothing. He can’t. Charles won’t let him.

“I could do anything I wanted. I could make you forget your name, your past, your mutation. I could make you do anything I wanted you to. I could make you into nothing more than an automaton obeying my every command. I could make you love me.”

Even the projection’s voice cracks on the last word and the real Charles, lying on the bed, feels his heart lurch uncomfortably in his chest.

He lets himself think about it. To imagine making Erik do his bidding, now and forever. To have him stand by his side, a partner, a lover, fighting with him and never against him. He’s greedy for it. Craving the idea of being able to touch Erik when he wants, how he wants. Reveling in the thought that Erik would be there to assist him, working together to protect mutants, teaching at the school, nurturing young minds. Everything he ever wanted. All of it a lie.

The vision fades and so does Charles’ anger.

He stares at his shaking hands and feels nothing but bone deep fatigue and self loathing.

“Get out.” His projection orders, no heat left in the words.

Erik scrambles up to his feet and moves to the door, but he stops there, staring back into the room, his eyes roaming. 

Charles lets the projection fade and the eyes land on him, sitting, pathetic and small on the bed.

“I said get out.” Charles repeats, voice straining.

“Charles -” Erik starts.

“Get out!” Charles growls. “Get the fuck out of my room!”

Erik’s eye widen, as if now, only now after everything he is finally surprised by Charles’ rage.

But he leaves. And the room is eerily silent and cold and suffocating. Erik is gone and nothing is better, Charles is merely alone with his thoughts and his pain and his anger and his endless mistakes. His outburst in this room, his lack of control over his anger and his telepathy yet another failing to add to a list so long Charles stares at the bar fridge in his room and wishes he was telekinetic so he could float the alcohol his way.

‘Hank?’ Charles sends out wearily and waits.

He shifts his body and lifts his legs up onto the bed, shuffling himself back until he’s resting against the headboard. Hank arrives moments later, bag in hand, reaching inside to quickly get Charles’ dose ready.

“You should have called earlier. You can barely move.” Hank mutters.

Charles simply grits his teeth against the mental onslaught of voices, Hank’s and every guest at hotel screaming in his mind, not able to respond. He certainly isn’t going tell Hank about his confrontation with Erik.

The sting of the needle is hardly noticeable, but the floaty feeling of the drug working its magic certainly is. Charles groans.

“Be a love and raid the mini-fridge for me?” Charles asks, blurry eyed.

“They have water, juice -” 

“Scotch if they have it.” Charles interrupts, goal clear.

“Charles, you should really be hydrating.” Hank frowns.

“Than bring some ice cubes for the scotch.” Charles mutters.

Hank leaves him with the scotch, a glass and a bucket of ice. Charles pours himself a generous few fingers of scotch and takes a quick gulp and another and another. He lets the burn of the alcohol wash away his thoughts, his feelings, the memory of today and all his yesterdays.

Sometimes that night he falls asleep. Still a hollow husk of a man. Still alone. A small body in a big bed with nothing but a bottle of scotch beside him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Running on Empty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25392436) by [IreneADonovan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneADonovan/pseuds/IreneADonovan)




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